We had not continued
our stroll for five minutes beyond the spot lately occupied by
the lion, when we suddenly came upon two bull buffaloes, who were
lying beneath a thick bush on the edge of a small glade: they
sprang up as we arrived, and started off. I made a quick shot as
they galloped across the narrow space, and dropped one apparently
dead with a Reilly No. 10. My Tokrooris were just preparing to
run in and cut the throat, as good Mussulmans, when the buffalo,
that was not twenty yards distant, suddenly sprang to his feet
and faced us. In another moment, with a short grunt, he
determined upon a charge, but hardly was he in his first bound,
when I fired the remaining barrel aimed at the point of the nose,
as this was elevated to such a degree that it would have been
useless to have fired at the forehead. He fell stone dead at the
shot; we threw some clods of earth at him, but this time there
was no mistake. Upon an examination of the body, we could only
find the marks of the first bullet that had passed through the
neck; there was no other hole in the skin, neither was there a
sign upon the head or horns that he had been shot; at length I
noticed blood issuing from the nose, and we found that the bullet
had entered the nostril; I inserted a ramrod as a probe, and we
cut to the extremity and found the bullet imbedded in the spine,
which was shattered to pieces in a portion of the neck.
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